The poem is in three sections. In the first he talks about his own experience of funerals. He then talks about the Troubles and how he would bring everyone back to a whole community in mourning rather than a divided one. The third section remembers Gunnar who was unavenged. He implies that to drop the pattern of tit-for-tat is the way forward for the community.

I

The first stanza shows that he took involvement in funerals as a coming of age, as he “shouldered a kind of manhood”. The lifting of the coffin is then a metaphor for adulthood. He is “stepping in” – the idea of replacing – where they have gone, he has to take their place in these rites.

He described the rooms as “tainted” which is ambiguous – they are darkened because of the mourning, but the word also carried negative connotations of being sullied/corrupted/damaged. There is a further description and the hands of the deceased are said to be “shackled in rosary beads”. Again this is ambiguous. The beads are wrapped around their hands as if prayers were being said – but the word “shackled” carried with is connotations of being a prisoner, being in chains and irons. The description continues – with Heaney indulging his taste for words resonating with each other: assonance of “puffed knuckles”, “brown shroud”, “quilted satin cribs”.

He looks upon it positively – “admiring” it. Despite the fact it is death and the rites of death, he appreciates how it looks in the candle-light. He says “wax melted down/and veined the candles” – ‘veined’ linking perhaps with the body. As the wax is in parallel with the dead, the flames are in parallel with the living – “the flames hovering/ to the women hovering” behind me.

The words “behind me” stand out at the start of a stanza. It echoes the “manhood” of the start – where he has moved from the women and children bracket into the men of the community.

I am not sure about the next bit:

“Dear soapstone masks,

Kissing their igloo brows

Had to suffice”

What are the “Dear soapstone masks”? Are they actual things? Or are they stony faces that people have on, as they lean over to kiss the deceased? If you know, please comment below :-)

I like the image at the end of section 1. The “black glacier of each funeral pushed away”. I get the sense that it is huge and moving almost imperceptibly slowly. The ‘glacier’ works will with the previous use of “glistening”, “gleaming” and “igloo” – and the sense of a penetrating cold comes through.

II

So from his past and general experience, he turns to the Troubles with the oxymoronic “neighbourly murder”. Nothing could be less neighbourly that that. He explains that when a murder happens they crave their rituals – “we pine for ceremony”   – each community needs to carry out the funeral rites for a familiar end to the unsettling events. They want “customary rhythms” – they want the beat to go on, but in a normal way, a familiar and comforting way.

He describes the “temperate footsteps of a cortege” – that the passion and anger is not present at the time of burial – emotions are held in check, as perhaps a mark of respect for the “blinded” homes. I take “blinded” to be ambiguous – that the blinds are down, or the homes have been maimed in some way – or that there is a short-sightedness that will result in retalitation for the murder.

He comes up with his suggestion – where he tries to rise above the present by looking back. He says:

“I would restore/the great chambers of Boyne”

The great chambers of Boyne, I belive is an ancient burial ground at Newgrange – a burial ground that pre-dates all of the sectarian tension in Northern Ireland – not to mention the Pyramids! He goes on to describe an imaginary cross-community mass funeral for the dead of the conflict – where they all come together to bury the dead on common ground – going back far enough to find their shared humanity.

The “purring” cars “nose into line” as the “whole country” tunes to the “muffled drumming”. So from all the streets there is a vision of a quiet coming together – the most important words I think are “whole country” – so the division and conflict is forgotten here in the process of burial. He imagines “ten thousand” engines -so it is a huge mass funeral he imagines.

I wondered about the next stanza where the women are lift behind in the kitchens – but, apparently, that’s what happened, historically – that funerals in Northern Ireland are all male – linking back to the shouldering on manhood in the opening.

So these women are left in a sleep like daze, imagining this mass cortege towards the megalithic mounds of Newgrange. The next image is odd – “quiet as a serpent” – maybe it is just me, but I can’t see a snake in literature without thinking about Eden – but that doesn’t seem to fit here? It is more like a visual image of the shape of these ten thousand cars in line, snaking their way up to the burial place. It is so long that its head is in there as the tail is still leaving.

III

After the burial, there are references to Vikings. The place names are as they would have been in viking times, with references to fjords. The ethic of non-retaliation in brought in here. By burying them together – there are signs of peace – “arbitration of the feud placated”.

Reference is made to an ancient warrior “Gunnar” – and the imagery becomes positive and optimistic towards the end:

“…like Gunnar

who lay beautiful

inside his burial mound”

Gunnar is held up as an example here – the important part about Gunnar was that he was “dead by violence and unavenged” -

The only way to end a feud is to have someone unavenged  - and this is the optimistic suggestion of the poet at the end, so that Gunnar was able to turn “with a joyful face / to look at the moon”.